


In-Significant

by Leseparatist



Category: Big Love
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-15
Updated: 2011-09-15
Packaged: 2017-10-23 18:47:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leseparatist/pseuds/Leseparatist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story about family values. Or: Nicolette Grant's life, redux.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In-Significant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlupnorth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlupnorth/gifts).



> Written during season four and definitely AU. Contains suggestions of femme.

IN-SIGNIFICANT

 

So it goes like this: she is used to never being given a choice – she is used to manipulating and lying to get her own way – her shopaholism has never been accidental.

She likes to buy things. Any things, truth be told; though the less practical the purchase, the freer it makes her feel in her choices (she never thinks this exact thought; she’s a good bad girl, or bad good girl). This is America, after all. The land of the free biscuits with every three packs of cereal.

She goes to the D.A.’s office. She drinks coffee with the other employees. She doesn’t scoff at a lewd joke one of them makes. She bites her tongue and smiles acerbically.

In the evening, she swallows her pill and washes it down with bottled water. The pilgrims had neither, of course.

She is not pregnant. The guilt should eat her up; it doesn’t.

*

The children are her joy and pride.

Sometimes, when she’s at work, she imagines what it would be like to be a single mother in this Godless world; or a single woman, no family at all. She shivers as though from cold. She dwells on the thought to draw fortitude from its monstrosity.

The trial is not going well and she stands between the two men in her life, father and husband, far more alike than the latter would ever admit.

People in their street still don’t look her in the eye when she greets them; her lie was good enough, the neighbours aren’t.

*

Angels are creatures of beauty; she dreams about them long before she meets the first one. (She does meet one. This is the story.)

The dreams only come on the nights when her husband shares bed with the other ones. They’re sensual and vivid, bright and awe-inducing. She wakes up in the middle of the night to find her nightshirt bundled up and her fingers between her legs; she goes to sleep immediately (an old trick; that way she won’t remember the sin in the morning).

The other ones monitor her menstrual cycle and make sure their husband is with her on what would be her fertile days.

She prays for forgiveness and sins on. (Neither her first time nor the last.)

*

There is three of them, and three is a holy number, (just not for her). But in those terms she never considers, she is not the mother, she is the crone. (The youngest one is far from virginal, so that’s okay.)

At work, a man smiles at her and she flushes, part anger, part pleasure from absolute unavailability.

(She imagines having sex with him in a bathroom stall and thanks God for being safe from such vile matters.)

She hardly gets any sleep that night; her husband’s snoring keeps her awake. She reminds herself that she wanted him.

He whispered in her ear that he wanted to give her a baby. She came thinking about her disgusting deception.

As she lies awake, she silently recites passages from the scripture, paying special attention to descriptions of punishment God rains down upon his chosen people.

*

There is a very special page in one of the books in that room. On that page, there are pictures of a young girl’s face, feet and hands. She could break that girl’s bones, she hates her so much.

The lawyer touches her hand and she startles, her heart beats fast; she gasps and her excuses sound fake in her own ears. For a man of the law and a heathen, he knows surprisingly little about deception.

Or his lust colours his perception.

(There are memories now, half-awakened. Sometimes she forgets that she ever knew a man before her husband. Sometimes she forgets that she’s forgetting.)

*

There is sound and then there is vision.

The beating of wings and a voice calling her name. Light.

She wakes up and wanders the rooms of her house. The children sleep. The husband is with one of the other ones.

She goes back to bed and lies back, chastising herself for irrationality.

She wakes up twice more that same night.

*

“You have been saved, March.”

They move her [March] from one place to another and praise her [March’s] work and commitment.

She envies this March she pretends to be. March has never been unworthy.

The lawyer brings her coffee and thanks her for help with his opening argument. A woman overhears it and mock-whistles.

Neither March nor she can approve of that.

*

She goes to the prophet in prison. She tells neither the other ones, nor her husband; they’ll simply assume she’s at work.

“Why did you make me do it,” she asks him. The question hangs in the air between them, like a blade, and then it falls, unanswered. He doesn’t even try to give her a “your best interest” or a “God’s will”.

His hair is thinning, and his son is gay, and his wife wanted to have the child killed. Sometimes she thinks maybe there is something wrong with them.

*

She touches the wings with her fingers and then with her face.

“Nicolette.”

The angel stands in the middle of her bedroom. The boys are asleep in their room. The husband is with the older one.

“You have been saved, Nicolette.” The promise is absolute, God’s love indubitable. She has always had faith, but she never trusted.

The warmth and light make her smile. In the morning, her pillow is wet with tears.

*

The pill tastes sweet. She washes it down with orange juice and wakes the children.

In the afternoon they’ll all pray for her uterus to bring forth another one. The secret is hers and hers alone. She chooses.

*

She has been chosen; the angel touches her breasts with her hand and rains kisses down Nikki’s un-growing stomach. Any thought of wrongness would be blasphemy.

She watches the angel spread her wings and kisses the angel’s mouth.

She smiles at work. Afterwards, she goes to the man who made her ID and asks for another one.

*

One day, they wake up and she is not there. Lacunas crop up where she would have spoken, the routine of their lives crumbling into dust around them.

They mourn and move on. The other ones never loved her quite so much not to. Ana takes her place with foreign grace and way less credit card debt.

*

[This is what perhaps happens:

She represses her life skilfully – she has practice. She moves to one city, then another, and meets a man who never speaks about God or duty and touches her when she wants him to, schedule-less.

Or: She comes to like the sea with time. The smell, at first alien, becomes a comfort. She learns to swim and lives with a woman who reminds her of the angel. One day she sends a postcard.

Or: Rapture. (She has been found worthy.)]

*

[This is what certainly happens:

The prophet dies in prison, before the trial concludes.

The young other one almost sleeps with her husband’s oldest son, once. The son leaves the state and faith, never to return. The young other one supports her husband throughout that suffering.

The compound withers and dies.

The oldest daughter calls her baby after the murdering grandmother and lives in sin. They all pretend that she is dead.

The husband has two or three moments of doubt, but his faith remains strong.

(This is a story about family values.)]


End file.
